Driver 3 (stylized as DRIV3R), is a 2004 racing, shooting, and adventure video game. It is the third installment in the Driver series and was developed by Reflections Interactive and published by Atari. Driver 3 was released in North America for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox on 21 June 2004. In Europe, it was officially released on 25 June, although due to the way Atari shipped the title across the continent, it made its way into independent UK retailers before the release date, even reaching sixth place in the ELSPA chart for that week. It was also developed by Sorrent and published in North America, while it was published by Unique Games in Europe; the game was released for mobile phones on 23 June 2004. On 15 March 2005, it was released on PC for US customers, it was also released on Game Boy Advance 25 October 2005. At one point a Nintendo GameCube version and an N-Gage version were planned, but both were cancelled.

Driver 3 brings back features from Driver 2 and adds the ability to ride motorcycles and boats, use weapons, swim, climb ladders, and enter certain buildings among other things, controlling more than one character, as well as entering and exiting cars.

Although two Driver games were published between them, 2011's Driver: San Francisco is considered the sequel to Driver 3.

In Istanbul, Turkey, FBI agents John Tanner (Michael Madsen) and Tobias Jones (Ving Rhames) are getting ready to intercept criminal Charles Jericho (Mickey Rourke) and his crew. Jericho arrives with his crew, reloading his sawn-off. Tanner and Jones lead the Turkish police and set up a roadblock, engaging a shootout. While Jones leads the men, Tanner chases Jericho through the streets, with the scene abruptly ending when he slams the car door.

Suddenly, couple of doctors are carrying Jericho and Tanner on medical beds, as they are both in a coma. They try to revive Tanner and recover him from his bullet wound, but his monitor flatlines.

Six months earlier, Tanner and Jones are in Miami, Florida infiltrating a crime ring known as South Beach, which specializes in stolen vehicles around Florida. A ruthless woman named Calita (Michelle Rodriguez) runs the crime ring, and is accompanied by weapons specialist Lomaz, and Bad Hand.

Tanner first infiltrates the South Beach with a police raid cornering a safehouse owned by Baccus, one of Calita's henchmen. After killing his guards, the two engage in a car chase, which ends in an accident. Tanner shoots and injures Baccus, who tells him about a car at a hotel that South Beach wants. As Tanner walks away, Baccus reaches for the keys to the car, but is shot by Tanner, who thinks he is pulling out a gun. Later that night, Tanner explains to Jones that he will go pick up the car and bring it back to South Beach. Jones tells Tanner to be careful, telling him that Calita is dangerous. He talks about a time when Calita killed her own crew with explosives.

Tanner is warily accepted by her crew and starts doing jobs for her. Local crime lord, The Gator, has angered Calita by screwing her in a deal, causing tensions between them to slowly rise. Calita sends Tanner on a mission to blow up Gator's yacht with C4 and, after a while, sends him to Gator to collect a car. Tanner gives him the money, but just as he leaves his office, he is ambushed and forced to escape Dodge Island.

After Tanner escapes, Calita calls The Gator and tells him he's a dead man. Tanner and Lomaz chase him down, but he escapes to Stiltsville where Tanner shoots him. His body falls into the sea. Tanner is then truly accepted in Calita's crew.

South Beach then moves their operations to Nice, France, and Tanner relocates as well. Tanner meets Vauban and Dubois, Interpol agents, also working undercover, and they have their own plans to take down South Beach. Tanner decides to work the job his own way and warns them to stay out of his way.

In a meanwhile, Calita gets in conflict with Fabienne, a woman who leads its own gang, and she has the cars that Calita wants. So Calita sends Tanner to complete various missions like finding three cars throughout the city and putting them on a back of a truck before it gets to compound, or following a van that leads him to the location of the car, forcing him to escape without damaging it. But Calita gets in trouble when she decides to kill Fabienne on her own.

Luckily, Tanner arrives on time and chases Fabienne. Tanner shoots at her and she dies. However, Dubois captured by Calita's gang so Tanner teams up with Vauban to rescue him and kill the bodyguards. Although, he was told to back out after this case, Tanner decides to go forth. But Tanner did not know that his cover is getting revealed by Calita, who's starting to doubt at his intentions.

Tanner goes with Dubois to a boathouse to get the information from a laptop. But the place looks very odd to him and he takes a look around. Tanner is hit in the head, and the man is revealed to be Calita's boss, Jericho. Calita shows up and the rest of the gang members and set up a trap, killing Dubois. While they shoot at Dubois, Tanner takes this opportunity to roll down the garage door and hold them for a while. He is hunted by Jericho and his crew but manages to get to Vauban and Jones and escape Nice.

Tanner follows Jericho back to Istanbul, and he is now working as a rogue agent, having get in conflict with the Interpol. Tanner manages to find out that the true leader of this crime ring is Jericho who killed Solomon Caine, his boss, to take his job. Tanner follows him to a meeting where he finds out that The Gator is still alive and is one of Jericho's enemies. However, Tanner is forced to escape when a guard spots him.

Tanner wants to return to Miami, to pick up The Gator before Jericho kills him, since he has the information about the cars. But, Vauban blames Tanner for Dubois's death and tells him that the bullets, with which Dubois was shot with, are his. Tanner is now in conflict with the Istanbul police but manages to escape back to his hotel.

Eventually, Tanner and Jones locate Lomaz and force him into cooperation. He told them that Calita and The Bagman are putting a deal on selling the cars to a new Russian owner. At the drop point, Jones hides behind a pillar while Tanner is waiting in the car. Calita predicts that something is wrong and turns around. The Bagman spots Jones and starts to run away. Jones follows him into a trap but manages to escape. Going back to the drop point, Tanner is chasing Calita throughout Istanbul. Tanner takes her down and brings her to custody. Calita tells them Jericho's plans knowing that he will kill her for screwing up. She tells them that the cars have already gone to Russia but Jericho and The Bagman are still in Istanbul to make the final payment. Tanner and the crew go to the place where the final payment is going to take place. When The Bagman gives Jericho only half of what they originally agreed to, Jericho shoots the Bagman dead. They see Jericho's truck drive away. Tanner catches up with the truck but ends up killing the wrong person. Jericho switched spots on the truck with Bad Hand and fled to the train station. Tanner later follows the train that Jericho is on.

Jericho tries to escape Istanbul but Tanner catches up to him. Tanner pulled his car in front of the train on a bridge, where Jericho jumps down and starts to run. In the final showdown, Tanner chases Jericho, followed by Vauban and Jones with Istanbul police beaten. Tanner faces Jericho in an alleyway as they are shooting on each other. Tanner overcomes Jericho. Tanner points his gun at Jericho but decides that he is not worth it. Tanner turns around and Jericho uses this opportunity to shoot him in the back saying "Mistake!".

Tanner and Jericho are brought to a hospital. The doctors are examining them as they are injured (as seen in the beginning). Tanner's monitor flatlines, but the doctors use a defibrillator and he survives.

The vehicles in Driver 3 are modelled on real life vehicles and are designated to behave as such. For example, bullet holes appear when a car is shot, vehicles only take significant damage when the engine is hit (if the car is hit behind, the trunk of the car will pop out and start bouncing off), tires can be shot at, leading them to puncture and screech very loudly while a vehicle is moving, and individual pieces of the car can be shot out or can fall out after taking damage (e.g. car doors can fall apart.)
If the engine is shot multiple times, smoke will start to burn out of the car. But if Tanner keeps shooting at it, the engine will ignite and the car will explode into small pieces. The car can also explode while Tanner's inside and driving. Bumping into objects and obstacles that stand in your way will also damage the car and make it explode. Vehicles respond very well to the collisions.

Weapons are unnamed in the game. Weapons' firing range depends on their type. When the game first starts in Take A Ride mode, Tanner is only equipped with one weapon. Other weapons are gained by playing missions. In Take A Ride mode - stealing them from the police, or from your enemies. Pedestrians will start running if they see Tanner carrying a gun or if they hear gunshots. They will also run if Tanner drives near them or on a footpath. There are various types of guns that are available in the game: pistols, rifles, grenade guns, etc.

The in-game music was composed by Marc Canham, Rich Aitken and Narco. The track changes automatically during gameplay (e.g. when chased by a police or your enemies, track starts to be much more action-like.) Also, there are various tunes that are characteristic for each city so it gives the atmosphere more life to it.

The game was in development for around 3.5 years. Reflections worked very hard to bring the cities to life as well as physics to make vehicles respond to damage and act realistically. The cities (Miami, Nice, Istanbul) were built and designed by a team of 25 artists. There are a total of 35 768 buildings in the game and 156.14 miles of road. Each building is modelled to an incredibly high detail (e.g. you can see the blinds hanging out from a window). There were also many things designed besides buildings: lamp posts, trash cans, trees, bushes, traffic lights, benches, boxes, fences, traffic signs, crates etc. Reflections also send their team on a mission to photograph all three cities.

Atari shot a film about Driver 3 called "Run The Gauntlet". This way they wanted to test vehicles in real life to see if they can bring that reality into the game. This was also useful to them for creating film director. There are over 70 vehicles that can be chosen in the game: cars, trucks, bikes, convertibles, boats, vans, buses and more. Every vehicle has its own handling and its own engine sound. Reflections modelled every part of the car separately (tires, car doors, car lights, trunk, etc.) and then they've combined it all together into a single vehicle.

Cutscenes were made by motion capture. They are pre-rendered. Altogether, there is about 40 minutes of cutscenes. Reflections drew a storyboard. Over 3 500 drawings were made in course of development. Motion capture actors went to a recording studio where the animators translated their movements into the characters they have built.

After an extensive and intensive promotional campaign, Driver 3 was met with positive to mixed to negative reception. GameRankings and Metacritic gave it a score of 79% for the mobile version;[2] 59.98% and 56 out of 100 for the Xbox version;[3][8] 58.34% and 57 out of 100 for the PlayStation 2 version;[4][7] 50% and 55 out of 100 for the Game Boy Advance version;[5][9] and 41.21% and 40 out of 100 for the PC version.[6][10]

Driver 3 was criticised for Tanner's lack of hand-to-hand combat skills and melee weapons. There were also criticisms for the poor implementation of the 'on foot' missions. This was also a criticism levelled at Driver 2. Police AI vehicles were criticized[by whom?] for the use of "doublespeed", a way of cheating in which a pursuing cop would suddenly double its speed making it hard (if not impossible) for the player to escape. The AI can easily stem from the series' long use of rubberband AI. No matter what vehicles players can pick (either fast or slow or even a police car), the police AI seems to always catch up and stay with the player.

Not all non video-game publications described the game as that bad. The Times gave it all five stars, saying, "The graphics are divine, with vast urban locales and spectacular crashes. The cars handle well, and each vehicle has its own characteristics. Yet this is no easy driving game — one of the reasons why, subject matter aside, it carries a 16+ rating."[34]Playboy gave it an 88% and stated: "Your investigation jump-starts reckless car chases through more than 150 miles of highways and city streets in detailed re-creations of Miami, Nice and Istanbul. Slam into any of the 30,000 buildings and your car crumbles realistically."[35] However, The Cincinnati Enquirer gave it three stars out of five and called its controls and animation "unresponsive and stiff".[33]